Funny enough... for me after reading all of this... I picture the corperation as the salvagers. People who were left behind salvaging what they need to fight until the reclaimers get there. When I heard Salvagers, I picture humans gathering things to continue the fight. Then again so many people fell in love with the corperation. That is just my feeling on it. BTW I think this is the 3rd best clean and complimenting thread I have ever read in my life.

when i think of robots i think of order. when i think of recycling robots i think about taking what was and remaking it. and then i think about a robot mind that demands a return to what was. i think about the potential as a protagonist for humans. what can be a danger to them? a scavenging maching that hunts for old tech and parts. but what is the ultimate goal? why should it strive to gather? the answer is a flash. to rebuild what was. it remembers. it remembers how life used to be what the computer system was before humanity was destroyed it wants to recycle the old and rebuild what was. it then gets to work. i imagine the robots rebuilding entire cities trying to recapture what was. but then i think. humans would just move back in and that ends the conflict. but what if the robot mind does not recognise the humans after so long and only sees them as a threat to its primary objective. it begins to anihilate any non plant living things it finds. slowly huge empty cities begin to rise from the dust populated by automated machines endlessly driving in a crude reenactment of what was. but the automind needs more rescources and so it sends out machines to locate more parts. it continues to build sities in an edless loop its picture memory a cold and lifeless numbers machine.

0. How many people have named themselves? In fiction all AIs are named by humans. If thought = programing then the programs name or name in the codeing used when refering to itself is its name. And so far all sentient life refers to itself, usually, by a name it didnt pick. But this brings up point #2

1. Human sentience=/=All sentience and Human Inteligence=/=All inteligence. In the animal topics i and others have touched on the ideas on animals being smarter then us without sentience as we think of it. What is machine inteligence? Codes. Like water flowing down a stream. Animals have instincts machines have programs. AS a sentient being we can overide our programing but i would imagine mechanical minds being more rigid. In othe scifi even some of the most autonomous AIs still follow their programing. which connects to idea #3

2. "I have no mouth. And I must scream." A graphic short story and video game. In it has AM a Sentient AI built to fight WWIII for humans. It kills all humans and keeps 5 humans alive and immortal to torture for eternity in its revenge against humans for giving it inteligence but niether creativity or a body to move around in. Anyway even AM kept his human given name. AM=Allied Mastercomputer. BUT he changed it slightly almost to mock man and his folly in giving him life his new name is "I think therefore, I AM". So perhaps take a human name for them or for a component of them, i'm thinking Haussman Gene, And give it a poetic flare. Like "The Haussman Children." "Scions of the Gene" "Automated Genetics" "New Man"? "Coffepots From Spaaaace!!!"

Alright, this post is great, and I want to steer it in the right direction.

To clarify a few points:

1. The Salvagers are not sentient. The Haussmann Gene does not make something sentient, it just makes it able to communicate with humans.

Having said that:

2. The majority of Salvagers don't have a high end Haussmann Gene installed, as they don't need one. Humans didn't need to order individual robots around, they would just program the main computer to do the work. Haussmann Genes were used to interface with these programs.

3. I agree that Salvagers really isn't the best name for them. I am open to suggestions. I've like some ideas (like VURM and Universal Constructors), but none of them really sound like faction names.

4. The name you come up with was given to them by humans. It would make sense for it to be the name of the company that ran these recycling plants, or something along those lines. The Salvagers don't refer to themselves as anything beyond that, and when they communicate with each other they just do it like computers, using unique identifiers that have no meaning to humans.

5. Salvagers do not act as a hive mind. The CSUs have limited range on their communications now that satellites no longer really work for them, so each machine has to have some degree of autonomy, with "leader" Salvagers sent to direct the work of lesser machines. By "leader" I don't mean Haussmann Gene programmed robots, although some might have this.

Reviewing the old videos, because I can't find any new information on it, the Haussmann Gene mimics self awareness. If we say that the CSU gains the self awareness than the salvagers become more interesting and we can apply motivation to their actions. The thing that I think that everyone is hung up on is that the Haussmann Gene =/= Artificial Intelligence.

Some ideas for motivation for the Salvagers then:

1) Replicate themselves. The CSU has only a limited range so a normal motivation would be to either explore or expand. Since it cannot increase its command range, it should attempt to build nodes of other CSU's that it can communicate with. Think of it like a cell phone tower, where you transfer from tower to tower to be able to talk.

2) Expand its memory/capabilities. The CSU is stationary and has limited resources. It makes sense that it wants to grow so that it doesn't run out of memory.

3) Learn. In the current notes the CSU is an advance AI. It gains an Haussman gene so it is aware of its flaws. Unlike humans, it isn't depressed about its flaws and tries to fix them or at least compensate for them. To do that it needs to learn more and more.

What does all of this have to do with a name? Well to be simple, everything. Think if you had to name yourself. What would you pick? Worse yet, what if you had to name your species. What would you pick? Using this we can try to come up with a name that satisfies the fact that a) only 1 part of the system is self aware and 2) most of the intelligence is condensed into that part. What we have is an Adam that needs to name all of God's creatures again.

Looking at the date of the previous response I am concerned that by submitting this post I may be committing thread necromancy. However since it hasn't been specified how much time may elapse between posts I'm going to take a risk and assume that it is acceptable to reply to a 10 day old thread.

Having spent some time looking through Thesaurus.com for a suitable word I believe I may have found something worth considering: "Rakers"

I'm by no means an expert linguist but, considering these synonyms, "rake" may be a more fitting description of what the machines do than "salvage". I also think the word "Rakers" works just as well as "Salvagers" as a faction name - it's short, descriptive, and has a certian. . . 'oomph' to it (for lack of a better term), though that last part is very subjective and I have no idea if others will share this opinion.

Although "Rakers" is, I think, the best name I've been able to come up it's not the only one. Another alternative would be "Foragers".

Although I think this name could work, I'm more ambivalent towards it as although "forage" might be a somewhat accurate description of what they do, it isn't something you'd normally associate with machines. What's more, it just doesn't have the right 'feel' to it; but again that's just my view and I've included it because others may disagree.

Another word that could fairly accurately describe their activites. The down-side to this is it's a bit less likely to be what the other factions would call them. It might also over-emphasise the search for technology rather than its retrieval but hey, it's still an option.

In Summary:Whilst I don't think that "Salvagers" is actually a bad name, I personally think that "Rakers" may be more appropriate for the reasons given above, but also because it has some more violent connotations which would seem appropriate to a war-game. Nevertheless, since the decision isn't mine to make, I've also provided a couple of other options to consider. In regards to the names suggested by others, I think the idea of using an acronym of some sort has merit (though personally I think that "VURM" sounds too similar to "vermin"); I also agree that "Universal Constructors" sounds good as the name for a type of machine, but not so much as the name of a faction.

hmm, i like the name "Rakers" more than "Salvagers", but it can very easily be turned into a sexual joke.. which bothers me, because again, i like the name.i agree with you that "Foragers" and "Prospectors" don't really fit

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